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Megalomania has no cure published in issue 4503 page 1 at 2009-08-27 A mere walk through Bucharest is enough for one to notice on the one hand the lack of a minimum interest for the health and wellbeing of its residents and on the other, the megalomaniac inclinations of its local officials. Romania's capital is a city of big contrasts. Residential districts of villas worth millions of euros, ritzy hotels and restaurants, exclusivist shops, luxury cars just out of the catalogues of big auto manufacturers, an opulence at odds with daily poverty. Pensioners standing in the street in the hope somebody would give them no matter how little money to buy a loaf of brad or a medicine. Scores of destitute people begging at church gates, groups of gypsies who, untroubled by anybody, least by police, would sell you anything, from stolen mobile phones to fake watches, or even abandoned children, if you have a gift for nosing things out and know where to go, to waste dumps and derelict houses with collapsed roofs, home to piles of refuse, dirty building sites where workers sleep right on the asphalt. Add to this landscape the pestilential smells emanated by sewages and, certainly, the Dambovita River, one of the greatest sources of infection in this city, the infernal traffic, the inefficient public transportation system, and not least the massive pollution that shortens the lives of its residents. The Capital is the mirror that reflects the chaos in the minds of those in charge of this city, the lack of a cohesive development plan and the absolute carelessness towards the needs of Bucharesters. It also reflects the penchant for pharaonic buildings, in the style of the People's House (the biggest civil building in the world), or the controversial project of the People's Salvation Cathedral, which is to be paid by taxpayers' money, no matter their religious denomination. Does Bucharest really need a cathedral to cost half a billion euros, as long as there is one or even two churches on almost every street? Obviously not. It is only the politicians of all hues who need to fall into the graces of the Romanian Orthodox Church in the hope they get believers' votes. The Orthodox Church won't take any money from its safe to pay for this new exotic example of megalomania, very much like it doesn't pay for the salaries of priests and church staff, which are paid from the public budget, despite the Church being the richest institution in this country.. Government officials should be sent to school again so that they may learn what a secular republic is. Priests' salaries were raised thrice, last year alone, by the Liberal government, with yet another pay raise by the Boc Executive last spring, before the signing of the agreement with the International Monetary Fund (IMF). Budgetary austerity for some, excessive generosity off public money for others. depending on which garb you wear. Local elected officials have promised the moon for years during electoral campaigns, yet, once installed comfortably in their elected seats, they forget all their promises as if God made them lose their mind. The shortage of seats in Bucharest's kindergartens comes to over 15,000 according to an Education Ministry report, yet, the City Hall does not see building more kindergartens as a priority. Parents outdo themselves in giving bribe money or making expensive gifts at several kindergartens in the hope they will eventually get a seat for their kids. Schools, hospitals are not a priority either, why should they be refurbished or modernised? Their being is reason enough to stay as they are! In 20 years of original democracy, as Ion Iliescu said, a single home for the elderly has been erected in Bucharest, as to social housing, we didn't know for at least one unit to have been constructed. And that, while thousands of people - senior citizens, families with children, were thrown into the street by the snowballing effect of building retrocession. The Bucharest City Hall, which sold those homes to tenants, washes its hands of it, saying there is no money left for home constructions. Consolidating the old buildings does not appear as a priority anymore (save for the City Hall building, whose consolidation has already been planned and will cost Bucharesters no less than RON 8 M), despite being part of the programme laid out by Sorin Oprescu during his mayoral campaign. The general mayor instead threatens us with an imminent quake to make at least 500,000 victims. Local elected officials do nothings, laying the blame with the residents of buildings with high seismic risk, who, they say, oppose consolidation works. What the local officials won't say is those buildings are under litigation, being claimed in court by the former owners, so that, as long as the legal status of those buildings is not settled, tenants cannot take relevant steps, only the City Hall could, but wouldn't do it. Why? The answer is plain and clear: because it does not care. Well, where is the money then? Let's see. Firstly, Bucharest has a budget similar to London's, as Sorin Oprescu boasts. This year, the bulk of investment funds go into the Basarab Flyover and the reconstruction of the Lia Manoliu Stadium. Okay, that aside, until recently at least, Bucharest's mayor was ready to spend hundreds of millions of euros, defying the needs of Bucharesters and the crisis, on polished gold clocks, lightened musical artesian fountains, to turn cemeteries into genuine botanical gardens by planting exotic trees and flowers. In the same clownish and megalomaniac tradition set by district mayors and the predecessors at the City Hall. While Bucharesters throng and get stifled in buses and subway trains, go round potholes and the rubbish left in the streets, Bucharest district mayors have built for themselves minuscule green areas with frail and scarce palm trees, artesian fountains just as kitchish and. without water most of the time. In district 4 for example, where small green 'oasis' abound, the mayor installed placards bearing his nickname, Piedone! Elsewhere in the district, dirt reigns, cables tangling on the soil slow down pedestrian traffic, wastelands are refuse oases where some poor harks graze, crippled by scrap metal traders. Still, Piedone has reasons to be proud of himself, as he planted some small fir trees with electric light white globes at their top. There are no parking places, no elevators for handicapped persons (only two subway stations are equipped with such elevators), there are many things we don't have. However, we have wireless internet in the Cismigiu Garden (across the street from the City Hall, mind you!) Speaking of priorities. We have a budget as big as London's indeed, yet, to paraphrase Basescu, Bucharest is no London! by <mailto:[email protected]> Rodica Pricop (C) 2000-2007 Nine o'Clock ---------------------------- Vali "Noble blood is an accident of fortune; noble actions are the chief mark of greatness." "When the power of love overcomes the love of power, the world will know peace." 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